Staff profiles

Dr Kate Holmes

Postdoctoral Research Associate

I am a Postdoctoral Research Associate on the AHRC funded Theatre and Visual Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century research project (collaboratively run with the Univeristy of Warwick). I joined the department as a staff member in 2018 after being awarded my PhD from the University in 2017.

My research is into the history of popular performance forms such as international circus, American vaudeville and British variety - focusing on the celebrity of female aerialists. I am interested in the embodied experience of being an audience member and have considered how spatial practices, kinaesthetic theory and female physical culture movements contributed to the meaning made by performance. As part of this research project I plan to extend my interest in audiences and spectacle.

Biography

I graduated with a BA in Drama from Exeter in 2000 and spent 10 years working in marketing whilst pursuing my amateur aerial practice. My interest in the relationship between theory and practice led me to complete an MA in Performance Research at the University of Bristol, before completing an AHRC funded PhD in Drama at Exeter in 2017. In October 2018 I started at the Drama department as a Postdoctoral Research Associate on the AHRC funded Theatre and Visual Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century collaborative project with Warwick University.